Ellis pulled his hand back, eyebrows high as Glynn patted at Aleks and gave him a smile. Aleks shot one more glance at Ellis—warning, if Ellis wasn’t very much mistaken—and went back for the cream and sugar.
Ellis leaned in. “D’you speak Coloran?”
A true grin bloomed on Glynn’s face, bold and unabashed. “Nope.”
“And he doesn’t speak Preidish.”
“Nope. Well, some.”
Ellis merely leaned back when Aleks brought over the cups and saucers. Three of them Ellis noted, and he thought there might’ve been some kind of warning in that too, a subtle “I’m joining you because I belong here” that Ellis had no intention of arguing with. He did smirk a little, though, and try very hard not to snort.
“He’s learning, though.” Glynn said it with a flick of her glance toward Aleks. From under her lashes. And with a bit of color high on her cheeks.
And every goddess save him, Ellis was going to choke on all the sweetness and twee. He sighed, thoroughly entertained but also still thoroughly swottled and angry and sixteen different kinds of worried.
That was when Howell came in, windswept and cranky and peering between Glynn and Aleks in a way that let Ellis know in no uncertain terms Howell hadn’t missed a thing when it came to this too-obvious prelude to a courting contract.
How old was Glynn, anyway? How old was Aleks? Were they even old enough for contracts? And how did contracts work in Colorat? Did they even have them?
When Howell’s gaze landed on Ellis, there was no surprise there—more like expectation realized as he nodded, pursed his lips, and waved down toward the village.
“You’ll be wanting Colonel-in-chief Alton.”
ALTON WAS, of course—of course—Mastermind.
Now that Ellis was here, slouching in the chair across from Alton’s desk, he realized he really should’ve thought of that. He at least should’ve clued in that something was coming when Howell had sighed at him and told him he was surprised—Ellis heard “disappointed”—that Ellis hadn’t shown up sooner. “Like mother, like son,” Howell said, morose, while he navigated the car he so clearly loved, probably wanting to smack some intelligence into his passenger but refraining because his passenger was the one who’d bought him the car .
Sometimes being wealthy and generous came in handy.
“Where have you sent Milo?” Ellis allowed the sharpness, the indignation, the sheer bloody anger to bleed through every syllable.
Alton, stone-faced as he’d been last night, merely lifted an eyebrow. He didn’t answer. Made it clear he wasn’t going to.
He looked different in his Home Guard uniform, all buttoned down and polished, with medals stretched across the lapels that spoke of a very long career, and a scar and demeanor that spoke of a violent one. Strangely, the uniform didn’t add gravitas or credibility to the remarkably unremarkable man who’d shown up in Ellis’s kitchen last night—Alton already had that, effortless and natural, whatever he decided to dress it up in.
The narrow-faced lieutenant almost hadn’t let Ellis in. Ellis’d had to pull the “I’m First Warden of Wellech, and I Have Important Business” tone. Even that hadn’t been working entirely until Alton had called from the other side of the door to let Ellis pass before he shouted the place down. As soon as Ellis heard the voice, he’d known.
“I know it was you.” Ellis tried to keep his hands from fisting, gripping his hat between them to remind him it was expensive and he’d be displeased with himself if he ruined it. “If I find out you’ve sent him after Ceri, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Alton folded his hands atop his desk and leaned over them. His expression was flat, but his gaze was sharp. “No, please, I’d like you to go on. I’m very interested to know exactly how much power you think you have here.” He waited, watching Ellis closely, and when Ellis had no answer—because he had no power, none, and he knew it—Alton sucked a tooth and sat back. He tipped his head. “I’m surprised it took you so long, actually. I’d been expecting you all morning, and then most of the afternoon.”
Ellis barely held in a growl. “How’d you get here so fast, anyway? You weren’t on the train.” Ellis may have been bleary-eyed and laughably distracted, but he would’ve noticed that.
“Really?” Alton’s eyebrows went up. “That’s what you want to ask me?”
“It’s one of the few questions I think you might answer.”
“And yet.” Alton smirked in the face of Ellis’s glare, but he did eventually let it drop and turned more serious. “I didn’t pull him in. He came to me. Other than that, there is nothing I can tell you besides he’s doing his duty to his country, and asked that I find a way for you to do the same.”
“Just like his mam tried to do for him?”
“Contrary to what you and your nearest and dearest seem to think, I am not here to arrange a war around the shifting whims of mams and cariads.” Alton shrugged. “You happen to fit a space I need filled. You’d be more valuable to Preidyn in Wellech, at least for now. If you choose to enlist instead, I won’t stop you. I’ll forget everything you agreed to last night, and we’ll pretend we never met. Either way, you won’t be sent after Milo. That’s not how this works. But if enlisting is what you want…” He waved a hand, negligent, before he paused with a hard look. “Although I’ll remind you that you’d be leaving Wellech to its Pennaeth, with no one between him and whatever havoc he might choose to wreak without you there to stop it or fix it. Kymbrygh needs Wellech. Preidyn needs Kymbrygh. Preidyn’s allies need Preidyn.” He put out his hands. “How we each fit into the duty we choose is up to what we have to offer. And how willing we are to offer it.”
Ellis let that stew for a moment, teeth set hard and head once again pounding, before he said, “So you’re not even going to tell me if you’ve turned him into a spy like his mam.”
“No.”
“Or where you’ve sent him.”
“No.”
“Or tell me I’m right when I say I know he’s gone off to Central Màstira.”
Because that was where dragons had gone missing, and Milo loved his dragons. That was where a coven had gone dark, and Milo had been outraged and terrified on behalf of every member of it. That was where they were killing Dewin, and the memory of Milo’s insistent words about duty and say you understand had been a stubbornly dismissed subvocal hum at the bottom of Ellis’s brain since he’d read that letter. Now they flared and blared and clamored ’til his ears were nearly ringing with it.
“No,” said Alton, calm and even.
Ellis had known it was coming. It still hurt, like skin rubbed raw.
“Then can you at least tell me,” Ellis ground out, this close to seething now, “how you expect a man who can’t even lie properly to infiltrate a country where they’re killing people like him?”
Alton stared, for quite a long time, evaluating, calculating, before he finally looked to the ceiling, muttered, “Give me strength,” and then something about amateurs before he looked back at Ellis. “I will tell you only that you’d do well not to underestimate what a person can do when given the proper tools, the proper training, and the proper motivation.” He stared hard at Ellis, mouth tight; Ellis didn’t know what his face looked like, but it must’ve been somewhat pathetic, because Alton eventually sighed, softened. “I am a proctor, Rhywun Ellis. I watch. I listen. I identify needs and place those who can fill them in the most advantageous positions. I am not in the business of taking unnecessary risks with those I command. I would not fill a position that requires a particular talent with someone who did not possess that talent.” He paused, thoughtful, then said, soft and quiet, “Of the very few people I would trust to see things others cannot, most—no, all of them—are Priddys.”
He didn’t put any emphasis on any particular word. And yet.
“Oh, bloody—” Ellis shut his eyes, wishing Milo were here so he could shake him, and then probably hug him, and then shake him some more. “He told you.”
>
Of course. Of course. Because the Black Dog had made sure this man would refuse her son when he came to enlist. And what one thing would make him go back on that and risk the Black Dog’s wrath?
The same thing that would have the Royal Services overlooking an exemption for dragonkin.
“You assume he had to tell me anything.”
“Oh, spare me your Mastermind swallop for once, would you?” Gah, Ellis really wanted to punch something. “Milo, you unbelievable, stupid, honorable, too-brave-for-your-own-good idiot!” He shot up from his chair, paced, but there was really nowhere to go and nothing he could do. Still, he turned on Alton, jabbed a finger at him. “If anything—”
He didn’t get to finish. A young sergeant burst in, not even bothering to knock, and waved what looked like a telegram at Alton.
“Syr!” She pulled up short, snapped out a salute, then gave Ellis a wary glance. She waved the telegram again. “I’m sorry, syr. It’s urgent from T—”
“Sergeant Sayer.” Alton’s voice was louder than Ellis had heard it yet, and his tone was oversharp. It stopped the sergeant cold. Alton tilted a bland smile that looked more like a gritting of teeth. “What have we discussed about blurting information before we’ve determined everyone in the room may hear it, Sergeant Sayer?”
The sergeant gulped, brown cheeks going somewhat gray as she shot another look at Ellis. She straightened her back. “Not to do it, syr.”
“Very good, sergeant.” Alton held out his hand. “Perhaps you should join the newest cadets at morning drill for the next week so you don’t forget again.”
“Right, syr. Sorry, syr.” She looked relieved when Alton took the telegram from her, even more so when he frowned down at it, said, “Dismissed.” His mouth was a thin line, his eyebrows pulled together, and he shut his eyes very briefly, waiting for the door to close behind the retreating sergeant before he looked up at Ellis. He set the telegram aside.
“You’re needed in Wellech. Now.”
Ellis blinked. Peered down at the telegram. It was unintelligible, at least to him. Some kind of code, probably. He pointed at it anyway, brazen.
“That doesn’t say Wellech.”
As if he would know.
Alton stood, all at once far more stiff and intent than Ellis had seen him thus far. Ellis would almost say agitated, but he didn’t think Alton got agitated.
“Rhywun Ellis.” Alton came around from behind his desk, back straight, expression blank. “Someone has apparently just bombed the temporary miners’ barracks at the Three Sisters Seam outside Littlederch. Luckily, it was a crap job, and most of them were at tea.”
White noise swelled in Ellis’s ears. He stared. “The temp…” His head spun a little.
Wellech had more ore seams and mines than any other parish. And tent cities and temporary barracks had sprung up all over Kymbrygh only last year. Soldiers, everyone knew, because you couldn’t keep a secret like that in communities that had sprouted decades, some of them centuries, ago specifically to work the mines. Everyone had assumed the soldiers were there to ensure Parliament’s orders concerning distribution were being followed, but—
“You’ve seen this coming for over a year.” Ellis stepped back, away, hat crumpled in his fist and acid in his chest. “Someone bombed soldiers, and you—”
“And a three-furlong stretch of tracks on the Tirryderch line only moments later.”
Ellis’s whole body jolted. He couldn’t process it. Bombed. Attacked. Kymbrygh.
“You need to go.” Alton jerked his chin at the door. “I’m going to be very busy in the next thirty seconds, and I need you in Wellech. Now. An hour ago. I need your Wardens patrolling every track, every tunnel, every stretch of coast, and I need you there telling me what they find.” Stern now. “Go. But don’t take the train.” He opened his office door with an impatient lift of his eyebrows.
Ellis took a step toward it. “But.” Everything was happening at once, none of it, not one second of it, what Ellis had thought it would be, and he couldn’t think straight. “Milo. What about—?”
“For pity’s sake, boy, I haven’t the time to mollycoddle you through your cariad crisis. If you can’t—”
“No, that’s not—no.” Ellis shook his head, trying to clear it, but all it did was make the pounding worse. “The dragons. Old Forge.” When Alton only continued to glower at him, Ellis set his teeth and made himself speak calmly and clearly. “They’ve been stealing dragons. And now they’re attacking Kymbrygh.”
And the only ones there to defend the preserve were a young girl, an old man, and a refugee dragonkin who didn’t even speak the language.
It was the closest Ellis had seen Alton come to an actual, genuine smile. He thumped Ellis on the shoulder, said, “And if they try it on at Old Forge, they’ll meet two of my better assets,” and shoved Ellis out the door. “Tell Brimstone and Jackrabbit hello for me.” There was a definite grin when he slammed the door in Ellis’s face.
Ellis barely noticed.
Because Brimstone. Jackrabbit.
Codenames.
And.
Well.
All right, then. There it was. Apparently everyone Ellis knew was a spy.
He couldn’t help himself when he got outside and saw Howell waiting for him, leaning against the car’s front fender and polishing away a speck on the paint with the cuff of his sleeve. Ellis merely walked toward the car, and stopped in front of it. He waited for Howell to look up, and when he did, Ellis bunged his ruined hat at him.
“So. Are you Brimstone or Jackrabbit?”
Chapter 17—Prelude
: a free-form introductory movement to a fugue or other more complex composition
Howell, it turned out, was neither Brimstone nor Jackrabbit. It was only that Alton was an arse.
Of course, Ellis only realized all this after having thoroughly insulted Howell by more or less calling him a liar when he denied being a spy, and then thoroughly infuriating him by implying Glynn was.
(In Ellis’s defense, he could totally see Glynn as a Jackrabbit. And now that Howell was basically breathing fire at him, Ellis could see Brimstone too. That was apparently neither here nor there, now that Ellis understood Alton had merely been winding him up.)
Howell grizzled all the way to the telegraph office. He grizzled some more while he waited for Ellis to send his messages—one to Petra with instructions to assist the mining camps in doubling security on Ellis’s authority; one to Tomos, one of the senior Wardens, to step up patrols with special attention on the railroad tracks and beaches. And Howell flat outdid himself grizzling when Ellis insisted on buying him an early supper at one of Whitpool’s better inns to make up for the imposition Ellis had made of himself.
All of which made Howell’s offer to drive Ellis to Wellech in the morning less appealing than it might otherwise have been. Anyway, it couldn’t wait for morning, and it was getting late already. Alton said Ellis was needed in Wellech now, and Ellis figured Alton would know. And, frankly, it wasn’t as though Ellis fancied the idea of staying in Milo’s house, likely Milo’s bed, when Milo—
Damn. Ellis had to swallow it down and shunt it aside or he’d end up blubbing all over Howell’s leather seats.
And anyway, Ellis wasn’t up to being in the company of anyone who might expect him to hold up one end of a conversation for a drive that was at least eight hours if the roads were in good repair, but probably more like ten, since it usually took well into summer to repair all the damage from spring wash-outs. His head was still spinning, and aching, and he hadn’t yet even managed to accept the fact that Milo was gone—gone. Ellis had spent last night and this morning not getting his head around spies and Pennaeth and war, but preparing himself for a honking great row in Ty Dreigiau’s dooryard that would likely alarm Milo’s precious bloody dragons and result in Ellis getting exactly what he wanted.
None of it had gone the way Ellis thought it would, none of it, and he didn’t know which bitter bone to c
lamp his jaw around and chew first.
“If you can get me to Hendrop before dark, that will do,” he told Howell.
There was a brewery there that made nightly lorry runs to a string of inns and pubs and taverns from Hendrop to Corstir, always finishing in Corstir just before midday. Ellis knew this because Jac—the holder of the Stone and Sickle, last stop on the run—had celebrated the approval of his cariad contract with Alun, the lorry driver, by closing the pub and disappearing for a week. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, probably, had he #1—told anyone, and #2—found his way out of bed to answer his door before Ellis and two other Wardens had shown up to look into why a well-liked pub holder had gone abruptly missing.
It could’ve been painfully embarrassing. It was actually disproportionately hilarious. Mostly because Jac had finally come to the door in nothing but a sheet to find three Wardens, his mam and brother, and about a dozen loyal and very worried Stone and Sickle patrons standing in his yard, staring then applauding when Jac somehow tripped himself out of the sheet and onto the porch. The ensuing blushing and stammering ended with an impromptu party in the pub’s main room—drinks on the house—as well as great memories and several new friends for Ellis.
“Or,” Ellis amended, conscious of the imposition on Howell, but unable to come up with a better alternative, “help me find someone who can get me to Hendrop. I know you’ve got to get back to the forge.” Rations came right at dusk, and there was prep time to consider as well
It was too long of a drive for a hire car. And with what Ellis suspected about the drivers, well. Even if Alton already knew where Ellis was going anyway, and why, Ellis didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Petulant, yes, all right, but Ellis figured he had the right.
Howell grunted, still clearly annoyed but also clearly unwilling to be an ungracious host. “Aleks and Glynn can sort the rations. They’ll know not to wait.”
Ellis lifted his eyebrows. “Glynn can handle rations by herself?”
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